


Until My Voice Fades

by Bella_Bellona



Series: Hearts of Darkness [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Depression, Gen, Hallucinations, M/M, Minor Character Death, Pining, Pre-Slash, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-02
Updated: 2013-12-02
Packaged: 2018-01-03 07:36:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1067791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bella_Bellona/pseuds/Bella_Bellona
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Derek leaves town Stiles learns what it means for Beacon Hills to become a beacon again. </p>
<p>(or - another in the long and distinguished line of fics where Derek leaves and Stiles emails him.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Until My Voice Fades

**Author's Note:**

> I have been working on this fic basically since 3A ended. It has taken me so. Long. I have an entire calendar and timeline saved on my computer for this fic, including moon cycles. 
> 
> Thanks to Autumn for cheerleading me, poking at me until I finally finished it, and reading over it to make sure it wasn't awful. 
> 
> Be warned for cannon levels of violence and angst and some very clear signs of depression in Stiles. Let me know if there's anything I missed tagging.

From: Stiles4Batman  
Sent Wed 10/2/13 11:49 PM  
To: Hale.Derek

Isaac gave me your email. And really, who knew you even had email there big guy? I’m impressed. 

You haven’t been answering calls or texts from anyone. Anyone being me and Isaac, since we’re the only ones calling. Scott thinks maybe you broke your phone during the whole thing with Jennifer and Deucalion. Maybe you just don’t want to hear from us. It’s cool, but I thought I’d try this way. 

I just want to make sure you’re both okay. I never got to see Cora before you left, even though Lydia swore she was fine.

It’s been twelve days since you left, everything’s quiet. We’re all still alive and the town’s still standing. So, good luck. 

-S

 

From: Stiles4Batman  
Sent Fri 10/18/13 8:27 PM  
To: Hale.Derek

I didn’t hear back from you, and I get that it’s probably because you don’t have anything to say and you left for a reason but tonight’s a full moon, so be careful, okay? 

Wherever you two are just be safe. 

Dad keeps getting called in to consult on missing person cases in Allendale. Runaways and vagrants going missing from truck stops, I guess they think he’s got experience. More experience than them. He says they think it’s a serial killer, except they haven’t found any bodies yet. Just a human though. I’d almost forgotten that there are just plain old humans out murdering other plain old humans in places that arent Beacon Hills. It’s almost refreshing. 

It’s been twenty eight days since you left. We’re all alive and the town’s still standing. 

-S

 

From: Stiles4Batman  
Sent Sun 10/20/13 11:18 PM  
To: Hale.Derek

I mean seriously? How could the two of you just let Deucalion go after everything? After everything he and his pack put us through. You know he was pulling the strings the whole time, both of you know that. But he’s suddenly got his eyesight back because druid magic *insert jazz hands* and suddenly he’s not a crazed mass murderer anymore?

And I get it, Scott, he’s the hero. He’s the True Alpha and he’s got this infuriating ability to hope for absolutely everyone. He thinks everyone is basically good. But someone has to make the hard decisions. Someone is going to have to pick up the pieces when he comes back and starts killing again or when the twins get bored and decide to drift back to the dark side. 

I mean that’s what I’m talking about! I’m just supposed to trust the twins now? After Boyd? They were good little minions once, what happens if Deucalion comes crawling back or they get tired of playing second string to the True Alpha?

I know I gave you a lot of shit, and I’m not saying you’re not a hero because you are, and I know everyone is embracing this whole ‘there’s a better way than killing’ thing. But you made the hard choices. We need you, Derek. 

It’s been a month, where are you?

-S

 

From: Stiles4Batman  
Sent Fri 10/31/13 10:53 PM  
To: Hale.Derek

Happy Halloween. 

It’s been forty one days. We’re still alive. Everything is mostly still standing, except for your family’s home. It’s completely gone now Derek, I’m sorry. There were ghouls, and the only thing that can kill them is fire. 

I’m glad you weren’t here. 

-S

 

From: Stiles4Batman  
Sent Mon 11/11/13 1:32 AM  
To: Hale.Derek

I don’t know how much you know about what happened at the end, that Scott, Allison and I died to find the Nemeton. Deaton said it would bring things here, make Beacon Hills a beacon again, but we didn’t know what that meant, not really. 

He also said it would put a darkness around our hearts. 

Maybe you can’t ever die and come back without bringing some darkness with you. Sometimes I think it’s not just the darkness in me I feel, but the darkness in everyone around me too. It’s not that I wouldn’t do it again, it was for my dad, for Melissa and Chris even. I can’t regret it, not ever, but I don’t know how to live with it either. 

Deaton’s taking me on as an apprentice. I’ll be Scott’s Emissary some day, when Deaton retires or whatever it is druids do when they get too old to druid. Oh, and Chris is teaching me some hand to hand combat. I know, I can just picture your judgemental eyebrows. (That’s assuming you’re actually reading this and not just deleting them out of spite.) The Argents have a new code- “We protect those who cannot protect themselves.” It’s fancier in Latin. Reminds me a lot of you actually.

I hope you’re somewhere nice right now, but knowing you you’re probably in Idaho or something. Have fun with the potatoes. 

It’s been 52 days since you left town. We’re all still alive. 

-S

 

From: Stiles4Batman  
Sent Sat 11/23/13 11:58 PM  
To: Hale.Derek

Yesterday was my birthday. Dad was gone again. Everyone forgot. 

64 days.

-S

 

From: Stiles4Batman  
Sent Mon 12/2/13 6:53 PM  
To: Hale.Derek

Sorry I missed Thanksgiving, there was a windigo. It took four people before we could kill it.

It took Danny. Jesus Derek. 

He was the only one who survived, but Scott had to give him the bite. Fuck, there was so much blood. I’ve never seen so much blood, everything smelled like copper and rot. Scott’s beating himself up for biting him, but what else could he do? I don’t think he realized that eventually he would have to turn someone. True Alpha or not I don’t know if he’ll ever believe the bite is a gift. 

It took Isaac and Aiden both to hold Ethan back long enough for Scott to give Danny the bite, it was like when Cora and Boyd went feral after the bank. He was just gone. He ripped the windigo to pieces. It was a human once, you know? How does something get so twisted?

Where are you?

It’s been 73 days, we’re all alive, barely. 

-S

 

From: Stiles4Batman  
Sent Mon 12/2/13 3:04 AM  
To: Hale.Derek

We’re supposed to be guardians. Wasn’t that the whole point of drowning ourselves? We turned the town into the fucking hell mouth and we can’t even keep people alive. Something big’s coming. I can feel it, but no one else wants to admit it. You’d think they’d listen to me for one goddamn second after the human sacrifices but I guess not. 

Allison’s not sleeping. Scott has gone to see fucking Gerard Argent three times in the last two weeks because he supposedly knows more about different types of monsters than anyone. Nevermind that he’s a psychotic old liar who will never willingly help anyone without some kind of ulterior motive. How the hell am I supposed to be an Emissary someday if no one listens to a thing I say?

I need someone on my side. 

-S

 

From: Stiles4Batman  
Sent Fri 12/6/13 3:28 AM  
To: Hale.Derek

Mountain Ash, of the genus Sorbus of family Rosaceae. Commonly known as Rowan. Rowans are unrelated to the true ash trees which belong to the genus Fraxinus, family Oleaceae (and are also pretty fucking useless in magic). There are more than forty different species, all of which are useful in making barriers against the supernatural, but some of them have fun additional properties. For instance- branches of Sorbus aucuparia can be charmed to prevent travelers from getting lost on their journey. Maybe I should have sent some with you. 

Rowan ash used alone or in combination with a variety of natural ingredients can be used to make circles that are inpenetrable and unbreakable by any supernatural being. Well, most anyway. I don’t know why Scott was able to break Jennifer’s barrier, Deaton thinks it’s because of the whole True Alpha thing. I don’t know though, mountain ash is made powerful through the belief of whoever’s using it. I don’t think she believed in her own magic at the end. Or, at least, I think she believed Scott’s power was stronger. 

Rowan ash can be mixed in paint, oil, wax, etc. to coat and ward surfaces long term against supernatural beings. The whole vet clinic is painted with the stuff. My house now too. 

There’s entire books on the properties and uses of Rowan, I’ve been reading until my eyes have gone blurry but it all boils down to belief. Believing that you’re strong enough. The center must hold. 

It’s been 77 days, Derek. Are you even out there?

-S

 

From: Stiles4Batman  
Sent Mon 12/16/13 4:56 PM  
To: Hale.Derek

Happy Birthday Asshole. 

Tomorrow’s a full moon so just, don’t die, yeah? This is day 87, I hope you find whatever you’re looking for. 

-S

 

From: Stiles4Batman  
Sent Wed 12/25/13 12:02 AM  
To: Hale.Derek

Merry Christmas. 

When I was a kid, once I was old enough to know what Christmas was, mom always let me stay up until midnight on Christmas eve. She was never one of those ‘the sooner you’re in bed the sooner santa can come’ parents. She always used to say that Santa had enough magic, he didn’t need us to help him out. We would stay up and bake cookies from scratch and slice apples for the reindeer. She made hot cider with cinnamon and the whole house smelled like Christmas. When I got too tired to keep my eyes open I would curl up right under the tree with the lights and the smell of pine. She sang me Russian carols that her babushka taught her until I was asleep. I was a heavy sleeper back then, before all this, and she could put out presents from santa without having to worry about waking me. We never had a tree after she died.

Dad didn’t even come home this year. 

I don’t know why I’m telling you this. There’s no one else to tell, I guess, and sometimes I’m afraid that I’m forgetting her. How her voice sounded, and the smell of her perfume. Sometimes I wonder if she was ever really here at all. 

96\.   
-S

 

From: Stiles4Batman  
Sent Fri 1/1/14 1:26 AM  
To: Hale.Derek

Happpy New Yearss, fuvker. 

I cant beiede you fucking ledt me. Assholw. I done even know if youre still alive. 

You cou;s be in a ditcj somewhere! You couls be chopped in half lide a fucking werewold….thing. A thins that hets chopped in hallf. Assjole. And I cant; sleep ad when i do i cant stop dreamins about tour stupid, gorfeous, stupid, stupid face. 

Asshole. 

I don;t know how many days Derke. A lot of ducking adays. 

-S

 

From: Stiles4Batman  
Sent Wed 1/1/14 8:19 PM  
To: Hale.Derek

I would ask you not to read the drunken email I sent you last night but I don’t really think you’re reading these things anyway so screw it, asshole. 

My hangover got interrupted by fairies. FAIRIES Derek. And Disney has lied to us all for years because they are not tiny or adorable, okay? They are terrifying and ancient, and they’re beautiful until they’re not. They’re beautiful until you spot it, the way their eyes are slitted like cats and their sclera is black, their teeth are just a little too sharp and their fingers are just a little too long. Their proportions are skewed, stretched out like taffy, and their bodies don’t fit together quite right. 

You miss all that at first, you just see the marble white skin and the long, long hair and the clothes out of a freaking Tolkien movie. Beautiful. Until they move a certain way, until the light hits their eyes or they smile like they know exactly how you’re going to die.

How do you fight something like that?

It’s been 103 days and I’m not sure we’re going to make it through another one. 

-S

 

From: Stiles4Batman  
Sent Thu 1/2/14 4:48 PM  
To: Hale.Derek

Fae, sidhe, the people of the mounds, fair folk, unseelie, aos si, Tuatha Dé Danann, the good neighbors, the fairie host. They have a hundred names. How do you stand against something like this?

And there she lullèd me asleep,  
And there I dreamed—Ah! woe betide!—  
The latest dream I ever dreamt  
On the cold hill side.

I saw pale kings and princes too,  
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;  
They cried—‘La Belle Dame sans Merci  
Hath thee in thrall!’

Gerard told Scott they don’t exist. Like he has a clue, I keep telling Scott that obsession is blinding and Gerard doesn’t have eyes for anything that doesn’t transform on full moons. 

Don’t exist. Well I’ve got news for you, asshole, because they’re here. They’re taking people. Just like the old stories say, under hill or whatever. I mean, there’s a distinct lack of Hills in Beacon Hills, but god knows how much of the stories are actually literal. Dancing to death, going under just to wake up a hundred years later when everyone you’ve ever known or loved is dead. They’re taking young people, young and beautiful. The stories say that too. How do you stop something with no mercy? We can’t reason with them, we’re fucking ants to them, Derek. Everything I can find says they only surface every three hundred years, but I cant figure out if it’s for a set number of days or if they have some kind of hot human pet quota to fill. 

I’m scared, Derek. What do we do? Tell me what to do. 

-S

 

From: Stiles4Batman  
Sent Mon 1/6/14 1:53 AM  
To: Hale.Derek

They’re gone. Just gone, we didn’t get rid of them, hell we couldn’t even find them while they were here unless they let us and that was just so they could bat us around like fucking cat toys. They took nine people with them, they just vanished off the face of the earth. No bodies no nothing. Just empty rooms and broken fucking families that will never know where their kid or wife or brother went and we couldn’t do a god damn thing. 

Nothing. 

Four kids from our school. Greenberg, he’s on the lacrosse team with us. Was. 

What’s the point of knowing if we can’t stop it? We’re worse than useless. 80 pages of research, I haven’t slept in four days, for nothing. For nothing. 

It’s been 108 days. Maybe you’re dead too. 

-S

 

From: Stiles4Batman  
Sent Wed 1/15/14 5:11 AM  
To: Hale.Derek

 

Sometimes I wonder if you were ever really here at all, or if we just made you up because we needed someone to blame. For a lot of stupid things. If you’re out there, Derek, none of it was your fault. 

I can’t sleep anymore, and sometimes I think I see you, sometimes I think you died. 

Come home. Please come home.

117 days is too long and the moon is full. 

-S

 

From: Stiles4Batman  
Sent Fri 2/14/14 11:13 PM  
To: Hale.Derek

Something ripped a hiker’s heart out last night and left her body on the trail. Happy fucking Valentine’s Day. 

Chris thinks it was a werewolf, because of the full moon. I’m afraid new hunters will come, hunters like Gerard. 

It’s been 147 days and we’re alive, not that it matters anymore. 

-S

 

From: Lahey96  
Sent Wed 2/19/14 5:48 PM  
To: Hale.Derek

It was an omega. She was completely bloodthirsty, feral. Chris put her down but not before she got a piece of Stiles. He’s okay, I mean, he’s not dead. 158 stitches across his left shoulder and chest, he’s still in the hospital but he made me promise to send you this. I’m doing it for him, not for you. 

Isaac

 

From: Stiles4Batman  
Sent Tues 3/4/14 2:34 AM  
To: Hale.Derek

Isaac promised he would tell you what happened. I didn’t want you to worry. Do you worry? Do you ever even think about us?

People dig scars, right? You know, for that rugged and manly vibe. Not that you have scars, and you’re like stupid gorgeous so you don’t really have to worry about people wanting you. Or not wanting you. Making up a lie to explain to whoever you’re with why it looks like you got mauled by a tiger or something. They keep telling me if I was a little slower I wouldn’t be here. I should be happy with the scars. I’m a survivor. 

I keep wishing I had been a little slower. 

165 Derek. 

-S

 

From: Stiles4Batman  
Sent Thu 3/13/14 2:16 AM  
To: Hale.Derek

Erica keeps scratching on my window, and smiling, smiling, smiling. Her teeth are so sharp, and her nails when they scratch the screen. All the better to eat you with. Eat me with. Is she coming to eat me? Because I didn’t save her, because I let her die. I was supposed to save her. I was supposed to be her Batman. 

But then she died. Did she die? We buried her. We buried her and she was dead, right? She was dead. She can’t be here if she’s dead, it’s not allowed. 

God I’m just so tired, I’m so tired Derek and I can’t remember. 

Was she dead?

-S

 

From: Stiles4Batman  
Sent Sat 3/22/14 5:14 PM  
To: Hale.Derek

You’ve been gone for six months exactly. 183 days. I can’t do this anymore Derek, I don’t even recognize myself anymore. I can’t sleep, I ran out of my Adderall 3 weeks too early and I can’t stop shaking. Dad’s never here and when he is he’s asleep. Scott goes to Gerard for information more than he comes to me now, he says I need rest, but I can’t rest. When I close my eyes I see fire and claws and the tree. That fucking tree. And you. 

You would tell me if you were dead wouldn’t you? Please just come home, make it stop. 

-S

 

From: Stiles4Batman  
Sent Wed 3/26/14 7:38 PM  
To: Hale.Derek

I saw mom today. I went to the bookstore after work and she was just there. Until she wasn’t. I don’t know who else to say this to. I think I’m losing my mind, Derek. You’ve been gone for 187 days and I keep seeing you, Erica, Heather, mom. I know it’s not real, it can’t be real. But I don’t know how to make it stop. I can’t tell Deaton or Scott, they’ll blame it on grief, on the darkness, on lack of sleep. But I know it’s not that. There’s something here, something wrong. 

-S

 

From: Stiles4Batman  
Sent Tues 4/1/14 12:12 AM  
To: Hale.Derek

 

It’s not just me, there have been a dozen sightings of people who shouldn’t be here, who can’t be here. Alison’s been seeing her mom. And Kate. She thought it was dreams at first, and then she was afraid she was going crazy, like me. 

I keep seeing you, Derek. Does that mean you’re dead too? Don’t be dead okay. Don’t be dead. You’ve been gone for 193 days, be alive. 

-S

 

From: Stiles4Batman  
Sent Sat 4/5/14 8:03 AM  
To: Hale.Derek

I think it’s a Kitsune. 

-S

 

From: Stiles4Batman  
Sent Sun 4/6/14 1:47 AM  
To: Hale.Derek

I was right. Scott made the hard choice. 

Allison, she almost killed Isaac. It was the fox and then it was her mom. Isaac was trying to get at her, it’s, throat and Allison just reacted. A knife in his ribs and a knife in his stomach and the thing just laughed. It just laughed. 

It kept twisting things, the room we were in and who it was. It’s been nine years since I heard my mom’s voice, nine years until today and I’m not even sure it got it right. It dragged her voice out of my memory and I’m not even sure. It tried turning into all of us, wanted to make us kill each other I guess. But Scott he, I don’t know, he just knew, maybe he could smell it or something, under everything. He ripped it apart. 

I was wrong, about Deucalion, about the hard choices. I’m glad you didn’t make that one. I wish Scott hadn’t had to make this one. I don’t know if he can forgive himself for it. 

I’m glad you weren’t here, I’m glad you weren’t here for it Derek. I never want to know what it would have done with your memories. 

It’s been 198 days. Don’t come back here. Beacon Hills is a graveyard. 

-S

**Author's Note:**

> I'm thinking about making this a series, and I have the seeds of a couple plots planted so let me know what you think! Come befriend me on tumblr if you like, heaveneartandhoratio.tumblr.com.


End file.
